Middle Primitive Elvish
os
root. round, about
Derivatives
- ᴺQ. os “around, about, round”
- ᴹQ. osto “city, town with wall round, fort” ✧ Ety/OS
- N. o “about, concerning” ✧ Ety/OS
- N. os- “about” ✧ Ety/OS
- N. ost “city, town (with wall round)” ✧ Ety/OS
- ᴺS. osta- “to surround with walls, build up, fortify, protect; to surround”
- ᴺS. ostor “enclosure, circuit of walls, *town wall”
- N. othrond “underground city, fortress” ✧ Ety/ROD
Element in
Variations
- OD ✧ EtyAC/OS
kor
root. round
Derivatives
Element in
A root in The Etymologies of the 1930s glossed “round, about”, with various derivatives like N. o “about, concerning” and ᴹQ. osto/N. ost “city, town with wall round” (Ety/OS). Tolkien also considered variant forms ᴹ√OD and ᴹ√OTH, the latter glossed “fort” (EtyAC/OS). This root in The Etymologies is a later iteration of unglossed ᴱ√OSO [’OSO] from the Qenya Lexicon of the 1910s with derivatives like ᴱQ. ossa “wall and moat” and ᴱQ. ostar “township” (QL/71). It also had derivatives in the contemporaneous Gnomish Lexicon such as G. ost “enclosure, yard; town” and G. osta- “to surround with walls, build up; fortify, protect” (GL/63). This early root probably meant something like “✱enclosure”.
In the Quendi and Eldar essay from 1959-60, Q. osto and S. ost were instead derived from the root √SOT “shelter, protect, defend”, but this root has no other derivatives.
Neo-Eldarin: For purposes of Neo-Eldarin, ᴹ√OS “round, about” is too useful to discard, and I prefer it over the later root √SOT, though √(O)S-OT might be salvaged as an extension of √OS.